Promises in Death (In Death #28)(47)

He tipped her head up. “Are we keeping score?”

“No. Maybe. Shit.”

“How am I doing?”

“Undisputed champ.”

“Good. I like to win.” He brushed her bangs back to study the injury himself. “You’ll do. Let’s eat.”

Just like that, she thought. Then, no. No, not just like that. She shifted her grip on him so her arms linked around his neck. “I love you.” And kissed him, soft, slow, deep. “I love you. I love you. I’m just going to keep saying it,” she told him as she pressed her body to his. “Racking them up, so I have a supply built up for when I forget to say it. I love who you are, what you are, how you talk, how you look at me.”

Her lips roamed over his face, down his throat, along his jaw, coming back to his with soft, sumptuous seduction. “I love your body, how you make me feel. I love your face, your mouth, your hands. Put your hands on me, Roarke. Put your hands on me.”

He’d planned to see she ate, rested a bit. To keep his eye on her in case . . . in case. Now she was taking him under. Drawing him down to drown in her.

He nudged the robe off her shoulders, so it slithered to the floor. And put his hands on her.

“More. More. I love you.” Her lips skimmed over his ear; her teeth scraped along his neck to add a shock of lust. “I want more. I want you.” She tugged at his jacket, and her laugh was a low, arousing purr. “Too many clothes. Like the first time, you’re wearing too many clothes. I have to fix that.”

To solve the problem, she ripped his shirt open, and laughed again. “Yeah, that’s better. Oh God, I love you.” Her breath hitched from the skill of his hands, his mouth, even as her fingers got busy on the hook of his trousers. Even when she found him, hot, hard.

“In me, I want you in me. I want you crazy and inside me. I want to see what it does to you, while I feel what it does to me.”

He would have lifted her, swept her up and to the bed. Driven himself, driven her beyond reason. But her mouth came back to his, so tenderly. Sweet, so sweet. He fell helplessly into the warm liquid mists of love.

“Come to bed,” he murmured. “Come to bed with me.”

“Too far.” In a lightning change of mood she hooked her foot behind his, shifted her weight. He landed under his hot-eyed naked wife on the couch.

Before he could catch his breath, her mouth was on his, tongue teasing, teeth nipping. His body quivered as he tried to find his balance.

“I’m going to take you.” Her breathless threat pounded through his blood. “I won’t stop till I’m finished, and you won’t finish until you’re in me. Until I let you in me.”

She demanded, she took, she dragged him to the heady brink of control, only to leave him quaking while she soothed and smoothed tenderness over greed.

He thought he might have begged her, or cursed her. And still she had her relentless way with his body, his heart.

His eyes were wild, and those strong, toned muscles trembled under her hands, her lips. He said her name, again and again, mixed and jumbled with words in English and Gaelic. Prayers, pleas, curses, she couldn’t know. Didn’t care. His fingers dug into her, a bruising testament to his loss of control. When she offered, he feasted on her br**sts like a man starving. Even when those fingers, that mouth shot her to orgasm, she held on. Held on.

She would take him.

Her breath screamed in her lungs; her heart beat to bursting. But she watched what she did to him, watched his eyes go molten with what she could do to him.

She gripped his hands, a vise of fingers. “Now,” she said. “Now, now, now.” And taking him in, rode him like a demon.

His vision blurred, and through the haze she was white and gold, slim and strong. His body bucked beneath hers, lashed to fury by pleasure. And striking, the dark blade of that pleasure carved him hollow.

He didn’t move, wasn’t sure he was capable. Reason, reality crept in slowly so he realized they lay tangled together on the sofa, a sweaty, sticky mess of still-quivering limbs and gasping breaths.

Christ Jesus, was there a luckier man in the universe?

Her skin was still hot, almost feverish. Her head lay like a stone on his chest. He considered, seriously, simply closing his eyes and sleeping just as they were for the next day or two.

Then she moaned, and she sighed. He searched for, and found, the connection between his brain and his arm so he could lift it and stroke her back.

And she purred.

“Bet you didn’t see that coming,” she murmured.

“I didn’t, no. If I’d realized rapping your head would turn you into an insatiable sexual maniac who’d use me so brutally, I’d have cold-cocked you long before this.”

She snickered against the side of his neck, then sighed again. “It wasn’t the head rap, it was the spaghetti. Or the spaghetti was the last in the line.”

“We’ll be eating it for the rest of our lives. Every bloody meal.” She shifted a little, snuggled a little. “It just, it all just made me go all gooey—and I was going to be all gooey and romantic and seduce you.” She lifted her head, smiled down at him. “Then I got really hungry.”

“I’m happy to be on the menu, anytime.”

“I screwed your brains out.”

“And then some.”